1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a workflow management apparatus, method, and storage medium storing a program for managing work operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic documents have become the core of work operations, and systems that can manage electronic documents and work operations in association with each other are becoming more and more necessary. Workflow management systems are widely used as such systems, processing documents according to a predefined flow of work operations called a workflow. For example, with an approval system, a workflow such as “creation (general worker)→auditing (section head)→approval (division head)” is created in advance, and payment slips, proposals, and so on are then processed in accordance with that workflow.
However, with such a workflow management system, detailed settings regarding the flow are made in advance, and thus there is a problem in that when the workflow is to be used in various departments, the workflow cannot be adjusted to the work operations thereof and advanced in a flexible manner. For example, with a task in which a user A creates and delivers two documents, or documents A and B, if the document A has already been created but the document B has not been created yet, the workflow cannot proceed, and there are cases where the work operations therefore stop. Accordingly, issues arise with respect to the advancement of work operations in cases where the flow cannot be set with flexibility.
In order to address such problems, a system capable of dividing tasks into completed tasks and incomplete tasks and then confirming the user of the next task only for completed tasks has been proposed, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-63751.
However, in such a conventional workflow management system, it is necessary to first sort out the individual operations that make up conventional work operations, such as the settlement of transportation costs, the approval of specifications, and so on, and then design a workflow that consolidates those individual operations into a single flow. For this reason, it is necessary to design a workflow in advance for each work operation. In addition, there is another problem in that managing the system design, changes, and so on incurs costs.
Furthermore, it is necessary to operate a workflow engine to control complex flows, which requires the system such as a PC to have high processing capabilities, thus leading to greater costs when constructing the system. It has therefore been difficult to implement a workflow management system that can execute work operations in a flexible manner.
The workflow management system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-63751 is capable of dividing a single defined task into multiple operations and confirming the person in charge of the next task only for the completed operations among the multiple operations contained in the task. However, because a single task within a workflow is divided into individual operations, the system ultimately cannot advance to the next step in the workflow until the incomplete operations have been completed.
Furthermore, when there is only a single operation, the task cannot be divided, making it impossible to construct a flexible workflow management system.